Tapin

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Date	Title	Body
6 weeks 1 day ago	I live in the Bay Area, and	I live in the Bay Area, and my older sister went to Boston College for undergrad and Stanford for medical school.  I've never heard her mention Stanford sports a single time. Oddly enough, the biggest Stanford fan I know is a Michigan alum (and fan) who went to Stanford for his post-grad.  Perhaps he learned his fandom in the midwest and just carried it over.
6 weeks 2 days ago	Was it the spring of '96 or	Was it the spring of '96 or the spring of '98 when, after the hockey team won the NCAA championship in overtime, a "riot" occurred that consisted of a mob of a couple hundred people walking down South U towards the Union, stopping a couple of places (including the Law Library) to sing the Victors? While it's one of my favorite memories of my time at Michigan, I can't remember what year it was.  Must be getting old.
6 weeks 3 days ago	I modded you (+1, Underrated)	I modded you (+1, Underrated) because I couldn't find the (+1, Awesome).
6 weeks 3 days ago	If all else fails, the	If all else fails, the Muppets have already shown us a way forward...
6 weeks 6 days ago	I think you might be	I think you might be overestimating Burke a bit.
6 weeks 6 days ago	It might be easier to list	It might be easier to list the awards that Burke won't win. Um... ...Hobey Baker?
7 weeks 4 days ago	Joe Posnanski	Joe Posnanski has you covered here.
8 weeks 5 days ago	Agreed	A third were people who got sloppy (VCU's take would be "they were playing faster than they were comfortable", but they were self-inflicted mistakes regardless of the spin); another third or so looked like blatant uncalled fouls.  I foresee a lot of complaining about the refs in my near future.
22 weeks 1 day ago	It's almost certainly just a	It's almost certainly just a "money grab" -- there's no other reasonable explanation -- but that explanation itself is unreasonable as well. In January of 1998, I remember Rose Bowl uniforms for sale in the bookstores.  They were the exact same uniforms worn during the year, except that they had the Rose Bowl patch on 'em.  They seemed to sell just fine, to the same people that already had a bunch of uniforms in their closet.
34 weeks 4 days ago	Yeah.	That trick play was atrocious, but there's so many things that went wrong in this game (almost any one of which could have led to a different result) that it's hard to put this on any one person's shoulders. Only positive coming out of the game that I saw: The D-line didn't cave nearly as badly as I had expected. Two weeks to learn from this and move on.
41 weeks 6 days ago	Do it with Twitter...	...but you don't need to bother with a 'bot.  Just set up a hashtag and go from there. Anyone "watching" the conversation can just search for the tag.  Anyone can block anyone they don't want to hear from.  Win/win.
47 weeks 2 days ago	So, I'm a slacker...	So, I'm a slacker and didn't contribute to the Kickstarter.  Also, I suck.  But it just so happens that I'm going to be in A^2 on Saturday, and would love to stop by and pick up a copy.  Will that be possible?  The phrasing ("We'll have copies and t-shirts available there for pickup if you bought on the Kickstarter") is sufficiently ambiguous -- I'm aware I missed my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the photobomb T-shirt, but are the "copies" only for Kickstarters as well? If so, drat. But I'll still stop by.  See you Saturday!
1 year 9 weeks ago	Out of curiosity	What's the chant at this point?  When I graduated in 1999, it was "chump, dick, wuss, douuuuuchebag, asshole, prick, CHEATER!" I always liked that it ended with a elementary-school-level taunt.  I was disappointed when I heard that it had grown, a few years later (and thus diminished the power of CHEATER!)... what is it now?
1 year 19 weeks ago	This.	I was about to post the exact same point.  Was it indisputably not a catch?  Apparently the refs thought so after review, and I'm really glad they did, but... not so sure.  Although the last animated gif makes a very strong argument that the refs got it right. Of course, I think that it was about as good a catch as the called-back INT that VT had in the third quarter(?), and if that one wasn't good enough, then this one wasn't good enough either, so at least they were consistent.
1 year 23 weeks ago	Wow.	A game photo... in a jersey thread... with a picture of Oregon... where they weren't the offenders. I see what you did there.  Well played, Moleskyn.
1 year 24 weeks ago	Geez	Ticket sales aren't -- and were never -- the issue. That photo that keeps cropping up of the completely empty stadium in Jacksonville for the ACC Championship in 2008 is the entirety of the debate.  That game had over 50,000 tickets "sold", and turnstile records indicate half that many people actually showed up, which led to massive embarrassment to the conference, and further led to the ACC no longer using Raymond James Stadium or bringing the tourism dollars associated with the event to Jacksonville. Currently, nearly 10% of the ("sold out") stadium is available for sale on stubhub.  Half of those tickets are for face value or below.  Without some sort of assistance, attendance at the game is going to be atrocious.  Who stands to lose? The conference, the stadium ownership, and the city. Until the "prankster" is outed, I'm on the side of those that think this was a real offer, extremely clumsily executed, that got pulled as soon as it went viral.
1 year 26 weeks ago	"My jaw..."	My jaw has made it halfway to the Orb of Zot. Yeah, that's right, this blog pulls out the ROGUELIKE references when things start gettin' real. Next up: detailed comparison of a certain dilithium-based lifeform vs. Rodney. Never change, Brian.
1 year 29 weeks ago	Big Ten title game?  Wow, the	Big Ten title game?  Wow, the standards really have fallen around here.
1 year 29 weeks ago	"Please wait until something	"Please wait until something actually happens" Ads in the concourse RAWK MUSIC Ridiculous "throwback" jerseys #1 Dog groomers Ridiculous "throwback" jerseys #2 $500 for the privelege of being denied a season ticket to see the worst slate of home games in a decade I'm sure there's more I haven't remembered.  So... by your reasoning, as far as I can tell, we need to wait until the bell has been rung, and then attempt to un-ring it?
1 year 29 weeks ago	Briefly	On page 147 there're a few paragraphs about Shafer leaving ("...Shafer announced his resignation"; I didn't remember that detail, although it's obvious he was pushed out).  And there's plenty of ink used to talk about how the defense kept getting worse and worse year after year, and the proxy battle that was Robinson's man Obi Ezeh vs. Rodriguez's man Kenny Demens in 2010. But it's certainly not one of the main themes of the book (through the first 375 pages, anyway -- I'll finish it on the commute home, I'm sure), which I suppose is mildly surprising.
1 year 29 weeks ago	Kinesiology	Back in my day ('95-'98), there were enough football players in the Kines program that it was derogatorily known as "the study of relaxation".  In hindsight, my time on campus was a hell of a lot more relaxed than a football player's three or four years, even though it was the Carr years. (Also: Now that I've unfairly ripped on your degree, it's only fair that I mention that I got a CS degree, which was at the time (and still?) a joint program between LSA & Engineering.  Which is to say, I was too much of a nerd for a humanities degree, too much of a slacker to pass organic chem.  Feel free to rip on my degree now.)
1 year 31 weeks ago	No, it's not.	Not even close.  And if you consider the massive number of violations -- I'm sorry, you call them self-reported violations, as if the description makes a difference -- to be an indication of how things are going well, it's going to be difficult to reach common ground. One last try: An institution in control has several responsibilities: Explain what the rules are to their wards and make sure they understand them; Monitor their wards to make sure they follow those rules; Report any violations of the rules; and Make sure those violations don't happen again OSU seems to have #3 down pat; I'm not so sure of 1 or 2, and it's patently obvious that 4 isn't even being considered.
1 year 31 weeks ago	This is an important point,	This is an important point, so I'm going to call it out -- Important in this whole mess is the LOIC/FTM stuff. Which OSU hasn't been hit with. Yet at least. And I believe that is because the majority of this, (really 90+% of it) has been self-reported. One shouldn't try to prove they don't "lack institutional control" because they self-report a ton of violations.  The proof would be not having violations in the first place. Of course, my opinion (and, for that matter, Ramzy and a number of other OSU bloggers(!) as well) and the NCAA's actions are not frequently aligned.
1 year 32 weeks ago	David Romer finds your lack	David Romer finds your lack of faith disturbing.
1 year 35 weeks ago	Congratulations!  You've	Congratulations!  You've failed Basic Reading Comprehension.
1 year 35 weeks ago	The "safe" play here is to	The "safe" play here is to kick it out of the endzone.  You kick it that far, and the small chance of a return for  TD is negated, and the opponent's field position is a known quantity.  And mortals don't normally lead thirty-second 80-yard drives.   Sure, you'd be able to run maybe eight seconds off the clock, but you also might be able to put Michigan back in the lead without the offense taking the field. I'm not saying it was the right call, merely that it was the typical "safe" call.
1 year 35 weeks ago	My daughter sat down to watch	My daughter sat down to watch the game with me -- she's very much still learning the game -- and I was effusing about Denard's speed and quickness just before that play happened.  I had to rewind it a few times: "He decided to turn upfield with FIVE white jerseys between him and the goal line, and very nearly made it!" I stopped juust short of quoting DFW: "Just look at him down there.  Look at that."
1 year 36 weeks ago	Yeah, that one's right up	Yeah, that one's right up there with the M hockey player who was asked about the Alaska Pipeline when they were up there in like '98: "It's just a big pipe."
1 year 37 weeks ago	So would you have a team that	So would you have a team that won their weaker conference go over a team that came in second place in their tougher conference? Sure. The undefeated team might (I'll even give you "probably") be beatable. The second-best team in a BCS conference has been already proven beatable. Would you base the rankings on the polls? Hell no. IF so, how would things be different from the current system? It pretty much all boils down to the fact that picking the "best" sixteen -- or eight -- or even four teams gives you a larger pool from which to potentially have picked the actual best team than does a two-team "championship". Don't make the perfect be the enemy of the good -- no system will be perfect, that's a given; but any reasonable playoff system (okay, "teams whose mascots have red as a color" might not work) will be better than what we have today.
1 year 45 weeks ago	I don't think it's much more	I don't think it's much more relevant, but the same chart for the Wisconsin game is pretty easy to generate from the UFR (except passer ratings, which wtf).  It's also an extremely small sample size, being a single game and all.   Situation G Att Comp Pct. Yards TD Int Long Tied 1 2 1 50.0 14 0 0 14 Losing By 1-7 Pts 1 4 1 25.0 3 0 0 3 Losing By 8-14 Pts 1 1 1 100.0 2 0 0 2 Losing By 15+ Pts 1 18 12 66.7 220 2 1 34   Situation G Att Yards Avg. TD Long 10+ 20+ Tied 1 2 7 3.5 0 6 0 0 Losing By 1-7 Pts 1 5 43 8.6 0 29 1 1 Losing By 8-14 Pts 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 Losing By 15+ Pts 1 14 71 5.1 2 15 4 0 ...aside from "we passed more and had Denard run less" once the game got out of hand, I don't think this tells us anything.

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